ST Homebrew Scene

[jaysmith2000]

Hey all,

 

I'm trying to dig up some information on the ST homebrew scene. Could anyone give me answers to the following questions?

 

What Media should new titles should come on. CD? Floppy?

What price range is normal for ST software?

Would people pay a few bucks more for a professional box and package?

 

Thanks in advance.

[nathanallan]

What Media should new titles should come on. CD? Floppy?

 

I'm into the homebrew scene as far as the ST. I say put it on a CD and recommend to make floppies if needed. There's a way to make a scsi cd-rom accessible on an ST, or you could network a PC with a cd-rom and let it access it that way over a serial port. It's slow, though. That's terminal for ya.

 

What price range is normal for ST software?

 

I've paid about $10-$25 for boxed software, and won't really pay more. I'd rather get a copied program on CD, or have somebody 'share'it with me.

 

Would people pay a few bucks more for a professional box and package?

 

I would. Just my humble opinion.

 

Nathan

[ppera]

Hey all,

 

I'm trying to dig up some information on the ST homebrew scene. Could anyone give me answers to the following questions?

 

What Media should new titles should come on. CD? Floppy?

What price range is normal for ST software?

Would people pay a few bucks more for a professional box and package?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

For me package is not relevant - I can download it, for instance, and transfer easy to Atari.

 

If proggy is short, no need for CD - it is not common by Atari owners.

 

What program(s) you have planned for us?

[nathanallan]

Let me be sure to ask, when you say professional packaging, what do you mean? When I hear that I think of opening the box and getting a manual out, if nothing else a three or four pager. Not just a box. maybe a statement of "look for these exciting titles!" on a separate sheet advertising the other publications. Is that what you mean by professional packaging?

 

I'm curious, too, what else is there in store.

[atarian1]

Hey all,

 

I'm trying to dig up some information on the ST homebrew scene. Could anyone give me answers to the following questions?

 

What Media should new titles should come on. CD? Floppy?

All software should come out on floppy. I don't agree with nathanallan's answer, as very few Atari ST owners have CD-ROM drives. Every ST has a floppy and ST programs are not that big. Putting software on CD would force people to spend $90+ to equip their ST with a CD-ROM (It's the SCSI-ACSI adapter that costs the most). I don't think casual ST gamers will spend $$$ on this. Casual gamers seem more numerous than the hardcore ST owners/gamers.

 

What price range is normal for ST software?

 

I say a little cheaper than cartridge-based software since floppies are cheaper. I would say $5-$10. It depends on how much your time programming the game is worth as floppies are cheap. If a cartridge-based game with manual and box costs $40, then the ST based game with floppy, box and manual should be about $20 (basically, whatever the cost of the box and manual are which I'm guess is $20 each).

 

Would people pay a few bucks more for a professional box and package?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Sure. If it works on the other platforms, I don't see why it wouldn't work on the ST.

[simonsunnyboy]

If you want professionial packaging, create floppies. If not, just offer the software for download or email it. People will find a way themselves to get it on the ST. If you want to distribute disk images, do not use .ST format, go for .MSA please.

 

cheers,

ssb

[ggn]

Homebrew scene? You mean some guys sitting down and combining code, gfx and music to produce something?

 

In that case the ST "homebrew scene" has been (mostly) the only source of getting new software/games/etc. for this platform for abuot 10 years now. It's far more different than the VCS or Jaguar scene because people do not charge ridiculous prices (or prices in gerenal) for the s/w they release, because you can use the floppy disk as a medium of transferring stuff to the ST. There are very few people that charge for some applications they write.

 

Personally I don't expect to pay for a new ST game or whatever (don't care about packaging too), and profit has never been in my mind when I did anything for my Ataris.

[nathanallan]

I thought about it and yeah, maybe that's a bit of a hassle for the casual gamer to go the CD approach. I'd go with floppies, too. Make sure you do 720k format though. Just sayin, it's a common duh-me mistake that I have to catch myself from making.

 

I'm secretly waiting for you to say you're gonna put programs on carts-- that would be sweet.

[Christos]

Firstly, I' ve never heard anyone using the term homebrew for the ST and it sounds very strange to me.

On the subject, I have found out that most users will use STEEM to play a game most of the time, I know I do, so the disk image format is a better choice and of course a zip file with all the data the best (hd installable too).

Generally, the ST scene has spoiled us (thanks ) and most of the new stuff, 2000- to the present, are free and I wouldn't really be inclined to buy a new game unless of course it was something exceptional and then with my own terms. If I were ever to write a game of commercial quality and I wanted to make some money out of it, I would offer it for free and sell it at the same time. After all there wouldn't be much difference in the amount of purchases.

Now, if you are making a new "Cubase" or "Signum" or some other application, things change drastically and many people would buy it, but not a game.

[jaysmith2000]

Thanks for the information guys. It's interesting the differences between the ST scene and the "console" scene. Nice to see folks here aren't as crazy as the say "Jaguar" community when it comes to releases and such. Forgive my ignorance and lack of knowledge on this, but have any games been made for the cart system on the ST before? I know some of you are eager to hear more and more information will be forthcoming. For now, I'm just doing information gathering. Thanks again.

[+remowilliams]

It's far more different than the VCS or Jaguar scene because people do not charge ridiculous prices (or prices in gerenal) for the s/w they release, because you can use the floppy disk as a medium of transferring stuff to the ST. There are very few people that charge for some applications they write.

Yes, I'm very thankful to those that spent their time coding utilities, games and such over the years and released them for free. Many people, many thanks!

 

Thanks for the information guys. It's interesting the differences between the ST scene and the "console" scene. Nice to see folks here aren't as crazy as the say "Jaguar" community when it comes to releases and such. Forgive my ignorance and lack of knowledge on this, but have any games been made for the cart system on the ST before?

I've never seen or even heard of an ST cartridge game. And Jay - I think you know by now that nobody is as crazy as the Jag fanbase.

 

Good luck with whatever you're working towards, looking forward to hearing more about it.

[ggn]

Thanks for the information guys. It's interesting the differences between the ST scene and the "console" scene. Nice to see folks here aren't as crazy as the say "Jaguar" community when it comes to releases and such. Forgive my ignorance and lack of knowledge on this, but have any games been made for the cart system on the ST before? I know some of you are eager to hear more and more information will be forthcoming. For now, I'm just doing information gathering. Thanks again.

 

No and there's no point really... You only get about 128k of storage space. Maybe you can get more by using bank switching (I think? ). The only thing that a game would benefit from being a cart game would be to cut down on loading times. And TBH, now that I have a Faclon with a huge hard disk and since I patch games for hd and falcon (and more ), my loading times are close to zero

 

OTOH if someone made a cart of let's say all the 4k/512b/128b demos out there it would be neat

[Lord-Chaos]

Hey all,

 

I'm trying to dig up some information on the ST homebrew scene. Could anyone give me answers to the following questions?

 

What Media should new titles should come on. CD? Floppy?

What price range is normal for ST software?

Would people pay a few bucks more for a professional box and package?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

I'd say floppy. With Fcopy Pro, I'm able to get about 900K on a DD disk. HD

disk-drives are kind of rare, so I'd use DD disks. The program should be

HD-installable if a HD is available.

 

Keep in mind a good program doesn't need to be huge. The ST's advantage

is that many programs are small, but powerful. ST Calamus comes on 2 disks.

Much smaller than the Windows version, but still very useful. Same can be

said for games. Many of the classics fit on one double sided DD disk.

 

If you make games and if you have a good concept, you will probably not

make money with an ST version, but you could make a Windows version

or let someone port your game. Even on the PC with all its 3D games a

simple game can be successful. That's my idea. Make a fun game for

your platform of choice and port it to PC/MAC if you want to make money.

The limitations of the old platforms will keep your focus on the important

things, playability and fun.

 

I don't know if ST users would pay for a professional box, I'd say make

a limited edition. There are a few ST collectors out there. You could also

find someone to port an ST game to the AMIGA. It's even possible

to store both ST and AMIGA versions on 1 disk. It was done with Starglider 2

AFAIK.

 

LC

[nathanallan]

On the subject of ST homebrewing, I'm signed up and waiting for the SatanDisk, a memory card reader for the ST(more than that, read up at atari-forum). That's a good way to get programs to it, though the satandisk won't be very common. I got on the bandwagon early (comparatively to now) and never had a harddisk to get programs from/to. The satandisk will be a godsend as far as transferring programs to the ST. ST stuff is expensive, homebrew or otherwise. I waited over a year looking for a SF314, and though nice, I have to do a dance and sing a song to get programs to floppy from the net these days.

 

And I dare not say it over there, but I'm just waiting for one of the ST gurus to conceptualize a wireless card for the new SatanDisk interface. SDIO style. It's only a matter of time.

 

And I think it's been said before, but if you can get 2600/5200/7800 games in carts for the ST, that would be neat.

 

Nathan

[Stefan_L]

Hey all,

 

Would people pay a few bucks more for a professional box and package?

 

I would... since i like to have something physical of stuff i like

A cartridge game could be nice just because nobody done that before.

[nathanallan]

As far as the original question, I reaffirm that I would pay a bit more. Heck, I paid for a Satandisk and it's gonna come in a decent package.

 

As for something on a cart, I wouldn't mind some kind of code to reorganize the desktop into some kind of Linux-ish interface. I know it's oretty much that way anyway, but having the file menu pop up ona right click of a mouse would be nice. Not that familiar with programming for the ST, though, especially the carts (only so many hours in a day to study on a hobby) so I'm not sure it could even be done. maybe from a floppy..?

 

Nathan

[Apex]

but have any games been made for the cart system on the ST before?

 

 

Narc from Ocean software was released on Cartridge if my memory serves me correctly.